Tag Archives: normal

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consultafft, at Bergen, Norway.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees and 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 metres showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no whtefish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encounterred in the old seal fishing grounds.

-The Washington Post, November 2, 1922

Yes dear reader, that date is correct. This is a report of conditions in the eastern Arctic 96 years ago. The warming spell began in 1918 and continued for some years before returning to normal, whatever normal is. Haven’t climatic conditions always been abnormal? Normal is an average, not an enduring condition.

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